My dining table was covered with kitchen appliances, books, and clothes. Large Ziploc bags filled with Beanie Babies adorned one corner, while serving dishes I never used were stacked on another. Throughout the day, the piles continued to grow, and eventually, they spread onto the floor under and around the table. The room became organized chaos fraught with emotion as I started letting go of my stuff.
I wasn’t doing this because the ever-adorable Marie Kondo was making me reevaluate my materialistic ways or accept that I needed to let go of items whose only purpose was sentimental value. I was finally moving to the big city and I needed money. And so I was purging my house of everything that I could live without for a few months, everything that could get me a few bucks, everything that I didn’t have room for in my new, tiny apartment.
And it did not bring me joy.
The problem with Tidying Up is that it revolves around the lives of upper-middle-class Americans who simply have too much stuff. Therefore, the KonMari method relies upon the assumption that Americans are simply so materialistic that they accumulate stuff they don’t need, and “tidying up” is essentially synonymous with decluttering.
The show, based on Kondo’s bestselling books, lingers on people’s tears as they let go of baby clothes and toys or as they…
